Dreamism: An Introduction to Modernized Mysticism

By Seth Ben Abraham

Embark on a Transformative Spiritual Quest

 

In "Dreamism: An Introduction to Modernized Mysticism," author Seth Ben Abraham invites you on an extraordinary journey into the heart of a new spiritual awakening. Bridging the gap between ancient wisdom and modern thought, this book unveils the inner understandings

• Language: English
• Publisher: n/a
• Release date: Nov 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869014931

Book preview

Introduction

This book doesn’t exist to convince you of anything. That is to say, you will take from these pages exactly what you are meant to take from them. Perhaps the synchronicities in your life have led you here, or maybe you’re just genuinely curious about the Dreamist philosophy. My aim is to teach you about the Dreamist belief system – it’s up to you to process that information any way you see fit. For myself and many others, this philosophy has been life-altering.

It is worth noting that Dreamism is not a religion, and it doesn’t ask you to give up yours – in fact, we don’t evangelize or proselytize at all. Instead, you may find that Dreamism gives you the tools to connect with your belief system on a deeper level. It is one of the many paths of spiritual improvement, a way to explore the inner you.

Dreamism, condensed down to its essence, is simply modernized mysticism. It takes notes from many different religions and belief systems to form a more cohesive understanding of the world and universe at large. It helps explain our place in this reality, and reality as a whole. We are all on a journey, whether we are aware of it or not.

The path that led me here has been winding and ever-changing. I was raised as a Christian – a Southern Baptist. Just a few weeks after my eighth birthday, my younger brother died of cancer. My world shattered around me. At such a young age, everything that I believed about the afterlife and G-d was suddenly thrown to the forefront of my mind. I struggled with many questions of life, mortality, the afterlife and the like. My mother was, of course, distraught, and nowhere near ready to answer some of life’s most fundamental questions, so she left the answering to who she perceived as the professionals – our religious leaders.

To be frank, I didn’t like many of the answers I was getting from the preachers who came to visit. I would ask them questions like where my brother was, and what heaven was like.

Each week, a different preacher would visit, and their answers varied. That really bothered me. I was a kid who was highly interested in science and the scientific method and their answers were inconsistent with each other, and inconsistent with reality. Some told me that I would see my brother again in heaven once I died, and others told me that heaven was just my wildest dreams – it was whatever I wanted it to be. One told me that heaven was simply being in G-d’s presence.

What does that even mean? I thought.

One even went as far as to tell me that the only way I’d ever see my brother again was to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, which caused me to mourn for the people who hadn’t done so yet. I realized that was a huge portion of the planet—including my three year-old brother who was too young to understand anything like that before he died.

As you can imagine, these visits put a lot of fear into me, not only for myself, but for him. If he wasn’t in heaven, then where was he?

Shortly thereafter I learned of Hell. That was enough to turn me off of religion for the next thirty years. What kind of a loving G-d would damn people to an eternity of suffering just for not knowing his name? This pushed me deeper into scientific thinking and research, which led me to agnosticism. I began to see the stories in the Bible as silly, nonsensical, and outright fabrications to control the population at large. The Christians I met, I started to have a deep distrust for, and I was even openly hostile towards them at times, knowing that on some level, they felt that my brother was in Hell and that soon I would join him.

I carried this burning anger inside of me as a young man and self-medicated my existential anxieties away with booze and acquaintances who were spiraling on their own journeys towards self-destruction. If we’re all going to Hell, why does anything matter? Why try? Why care at all?

I spent my early twenties in more bar fights than I can count, angry at the world for the grim reality it served me. Moving from one worldly pleasure to the next, I’d try just about anything to numb the pain of a meaningless existence. Eventually, I rejected religion altogether. I saw it as nothing more than a crutch for people who couldn’t cope with the oblivion that awaits them when they die. I pitied the religious and saw them as lost folks clinging to their egos – people who just didn’t realize that everything they did in life would ultimately be meaningless. As for me, I felt that in essence, I was already dead. I knew I’d never see my brother again, or anyone else I loved once I was gone. It was a very nihilistic view, a view that greatly hindered me on a spiritual level.

This went on for far longer than I’d like to admit, and now I think back and recoil at all of the time I’ve wasted. All of the time that I could have spent helping those around me. All of the time that I could have helped repair this reality, and my soul itself. I was letting my primitive mind, my monkey brain, take the wheel and steer.

...and then I discovered Judaism.

Judaism answered many of the questions in a way that satisfied my soul and touched me on a deeper level. Judaism may do the same for you, or it may not. Maybe Christianity has touched your heart, or Wicca, Buddhism, or Rastafarianism, but that’s not important. All that is important is that something does. Everyone needs something to ignite that spark in them – for some it’s an incredible view, the inner machinations of the human body, or learning about celestial bodies. For some, that spark might come when they first lay eyes on their children, or the person they love. Something, at some time will grip you and you’ll say to yourself, all of this cannot be for nothing, and that revelation, if you let it, will lead you down a spiritual path of reflection and exploration. Perhaps it already has, and that’s why you’re here.

Much of this book will be from the perspective of a Jew, because, well, I’m Jewish. Many of the ideas that composite Dreamism are distilled from the mystical side of Judaism, because Judaism is a large source of mystical beliefs. Dreamism, however, is not a strictly Jewish belief system as mentioned earlier. It pulls from Rastafarianism, Wicca, Paganism, Taoism, Buddhism, many Native American and Aboriginal beliefs, Sufism, and African spirituality as well. We can learn from the people who came before us, and we don’t have an allegiance to any particular group of people. As Dreamists, we see humanity as one people working hard to usher in the World To Come – we’ll dive more into that later.

Politics also helped shape my beliefs. As I marched the streets of Tampa, Florida as part of the Occupy Movement before joining leftist groups in Dayton, Ohio to feed the unhoused. I just couldn’t fathom why some people were okay with other people not having shelter or food, or why there isn’t a bigger push to help these folks. Especially from our government which is supposed to be our advocates. The only groups I ever saw feeding people outside of us were religious groups, which caused me to pause and reevaluate religion and spirituality as a whole. 

Why were these people, which frankly, I saw as evil at this time in my life, taking on such a noble cause? If they were so bad, why did they spend so much time helping others? The answer for many was because they wanted to convert them, bring them into their army of believers. However, one group wasn’t doing it for that reason, the Jews. They do not proselytize, in fact, it’s looked down on harshly. So, what did they have to gain from it? They have no threat of Hell to keep them in line.

This is when I learned of the concept of Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world. Jews do it because it helps make the world a better place around them, and perhaps sometimes even selfishly. You’re not getting mugged when a mugger’s needs are already met, because it’s rare for someone to risk their freedom unless it’s out of pure desperation. Crime and desperation can be minimized by caring for the marginalized, and Jews, whether through acts of self-preservation or loving-kindness, were out there making things happen for the forgotten. That resonated with me in a time in my life when I was open to receiving it.

So began my journey of introspection. I started grabbing every book on Judaism I could get my hands on and speaking to the rabbis of every congregation, from the Chasidim to Reform. In those books and discussions, I found a deeper lore in Kabbalah and Mussar, my first foray into mysticism. As I explored deeper, I started to recognize the synchronicities in my life, and began understanding just how G-d communicates with us. G-d doesn’t use words to speak to us; G-d uses feelings and these synchronicities to show us that He’s here.

Soon, I packed my bookshelf to the brim with every book on mysticism I could find from cultures all around the world. From civilizations that have gone, to those still actively communing with G-d. Through these books, I found a common thread – a glue that binds us all no matter the belief system. Modern science is just now beginning to scratch the surface of what mystics have known since the dawn of man, when we would sit and ponder life and the cosmos around us.

Mysticism is found in every religion, and every culture. That really struck me. Even Christians have their own form of mysticism, though it’s rarely visited today by mainstream Christianity. It is, however, making a resurgence. Many of us have lost touch with the esoteric knowledge of the past, and that’s by design. Religion as well as science have done everything they can to discredit mysticism because relying on yourself means you aren’t relying on them. Mysticism is very personal, which is the antithesis to many religions, because, frankly, religions need membership. When you get right down to it, though, much of what you can get out of religion, you can get right at home, all by yourself. (Not everything, though!)

Of course, again, I’m not trying to dissuade you from religion – quite the contrary. Religion has its place, and community is a very important part of Dreamism. We need to work together for the future we want and deserve. I’m simply here to show you that there is another way—another meaningful look at how we came to be, and where we’re headed. As you read this book, my hope is that you’ll discover tools to help deepen your beliefs and your commune with G-d. My wish is that this is a jumping-off point for you to explore forgotten parts of your religion and the beliefs of people around the world. It does not have to conflict with what you believe now, and instead should enrich it. After all, religion is just a way for humankind to create a relationship with the divinity that created us.

All religions are vehicles to G-d.

I hope I can streamline these higher concepts in an easily digestible way so that you can actually get something out of it without an exhausting amount of effort and time. A lot of books on mysticism are not geared towards the average reader, especially from Jewish sources – many of which you’ll need to understand Hebrew to read. This unfortunately excludes many people from delving into these topics meaningfully, which is a huge shame. Some topics, like Mussar, demand that you’re at least 40 years old before approaching the subject, but I personally find that to be silly. You do not need to wait to hit some arbitrary number of years on Earth to start improving your life and soul. You can start today, right now, right this second.

All I ask is that you find a quiet spot to read, somewhere where you can truly give this your undivided attention. This demands a certain seriousness that you should carry with you moving forward in your journey. Improving your soul will not only improve your own physical and mental well-being, but it will also improve your relationships with the people around you. It should be treated as seriously as diet and exercise, because when your spiritual health is out of balance, everything else is too.

The Torah says You shall love the Lord your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Interpret that as You should love G-d, yourself, everyone around you, as well as all of creation, with all of your heart, your soul and your might. As you will soon learn, it’s all comprised of G-d. You owe it to yourself to give spiritual improvement everything you’ve got, and trust me, when you do, it will give back more than you could even imagine.

Shalom, friend. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for investing in yourself. None of us can build the world to come by ourselves.

Chapter 1: G-d and The Divine Dream

To understand what G-d is, we have to go way back to before the big bang. We have to understand what Ein Sof is. Ein Sof, often spelled as Ain Soph, is a term used in Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism, to denote the infinite or the endless. The term Ein Sof represents G-d prior to his self-manifestation in the creation of the spiritual and physical realms.

In Kabbalistic theology, Ein Sof is the most fundamental concept of G-d. It describes the state of G-d existing as an infinite and concealed presence before the creation of the universe. Ein Sof is beyond all categories of time, space, and change. It is the divine reality that transcends any understanding or conceptualization; thus, it's often described as the state of G-d that is most hidden or concealed